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The Paul Revere Pottery was established in Boston’s North End in 1908 under the direction of Edith Guerrier and her artistic partner, Edith Brown. Guerrier ran the neighborhood’s branch of the Boston Public Library and had developed educational clubs for local immigrant girls, primarily of Italian and Eastern European heritage. The clubs were part of a city-wide effort to keep these girls “off the streets” and to assimilate them into the American way of life.

Financed by philanthropist Helen Osborne Storrow, the pottery’s mission was to help support the library clubs and to offer the oldest girls, members of the Saturday Evening Girls (SEG) club, an opportunity to earn money in a healthy and stimulating work environment. This child’s bowl - decorated with rabbits, turtles, and the advice “The race is not always to the swift”- is one of the earliest known works produced by the pottery and shows the early, gritty surfaces that were soon replaced with high gloss glazes.

This text was adapted from Ward, et al., MFA Highlights: American Decorative Arts & Sculpture (Boston, 2006) available at www.mfashop.com/mfa-publications.html.